Wednesday, July 27, 2016

TRUMP: I'm not going to tell Putin what to do. Why should I tell Putin what to do? He already did something today where he said don't blame them, essentially, for your incompetence.

Let me tell you, it's not even about Russia or China or whoever it is that's doing the hacking. It was about the things that were said in those e-mails. They were terrible things, talking about Jewish, talking about race, talking about atheist, trying to pin labels on people -- what was said was a disgrace, and it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and believe me, as sure as you're sitting there, Hillary Clinton knew about it. She knew everything.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz could not breathe without speaking and getting approval from Hillary Clinton. Couldn't breathe. And you saw that. It also showed that it was a fixed race, but I've been saying that long before I saw the e-mails. It was a rigged race. It was totally rigged. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz rigged it for Hillary Clinton, and the sad part is, Bernie Sanders has, to use an old word that I use on occasion, he's lost his energy. He wants to go home and go to sleep. But he's got a lot of people that walked out last night. Now, hundreds of people walked out of the Democrat Convention last night. I didn't even hear about it. Nobody showed it. I didn't see it on television. You people don't talk about it.

The Republican Convention was incredible. I hear I had one of the biggest bounces in decades. Like, some people are saying nine points. In fact, a poll just came out ten minutes ago, "Los Angeles Times", Trump 47, Clinton 40. And the reason is that people are sick and tired of Hillary Clinton.

QUESTION: (inaudible) Putin (ph) say stay out? Why not say that?TRUMP: Why do I have to (ph) get involved with Putin? I have nothing to do with Putin. I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me. He doesn't respect our president. And if it is Russia -- which it's probably not, nobody knows who it is -- but if it is Russia, it's really bad for a different reason, because it shows how little respect they have for our country, when they would hack into a major party and get everything. But it would be interesting to see -- I will tell you this -- Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be next.

Because he invited Russia to release Hillary Clinton's private emails to the press, which some people might consider an invitation to a foreign country to help him win the election, it's gotten the most attention. And for good reason.

But also note that he, and most Republicans along with many members of the press, are claiming that the DNC emails are the real scandal because they show one email where someone suggested that they use Bernie Sanders religious beliefs against him, which is indeed very wrong. There is also evidence of hostility within the DNC toward the Sanders campaign, also very wrong. The DNC apologized, Wasserman-Shultz was run out of the convention and that was the right thing to do. But there isn't any evidence that their hostility translated into any action that caused Sanders to lose the election. Really folks, that did not happen.

But what about the rest of what he said? Donald "they're rapists and criminals" Trump is seriously clutching his pearls over some DNC official "talking about Jewish, talking about race, talking about atheist, trying to pin labels on people?" The man who has inspired the white supremacist movement in this country to heights it hasn't seen for decades? The man who personally tweets bogus racist statistics and antisemitic symbols? The king of the fucking birthers? You've got to be kidding me.

Just as there's no evidence that Trump himself directed the hack against the DNC there's no evidence that Hillary Clinton directed the DNC to try to thwart Sanders' election. But let's just say that if the former were proven to be true, there would be some issues that go far beyond hardball party politics.

Indeed, if "someone" outside the US, for reasons that are obscure, is trying to tilt the election on behalf of this lunatic that strikes me as substantially more interesting and important. Seriously, there is just no equivalence to the alleged "crimes."

On CBS’ Face the Nation, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said his administration would target the wives and families of known and suspected terrorists.

Trump compared the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center to Wednesday’s San Bernardino shooting, saying that he would have gone after the wives of the 9/11 terrorist:

“At least I would certainly go after the wives who absolutely knew it was happening, and I guess your definition of what I’d do, I’m going to leave that to your imagination.”